Merry Christmas!

Oh my gosh, this season I have had the Christmas Spirit SOOOOO bad! I swear I was more excited about Christmas than Alex was! And it paid off, I was not disappointed. My boys were excited and grateful and constantly surprised at all the loot they got (Ok, mostly just Alex....) and that made it amazing.
  Last night we went to my mom's house for Christmas Eve, the whole family was there (Except Cyrus & Fam of course) where we had a simple stew dinner and my dad read the story of the first Christmas from the Bible. It's a tradition us kids require of him since we remember our Grandpa Price reading us the story every Christmas eve when we were kids. Since he died while we were all pretty young we cherish it. Thus, we make my dad do the same now. We had stew to remind us of what they ate back when Jesus was born (sort of...) and Jill had a little demonstration for the kids with flat bread, goat cheese and dates. Our small effort to remind little kids that Christmas is more than just presents.
  So then there was Christmas morning. And then there was the inevitable "Uh.... we forgot to charge the battery on the camera." Yup, it's true. We did, forget that is. And since we forgot I must ask your forgiveness for the quality of ALL of the Christmas morning pictures as they were all taken on my phone. Which could be worse, my phone camera is not that bad. And for those of you that have an Iphone, ICloud rules. Anyway, on with the show.

Thank you to Nellie, The Worthams, Grandma and Grandpa Koch, Grandma and Grandpa Price, Grandpa Mayers and everyone else for EVERYTHING! It was all loved and appreciated. Merry Christmas!

Jeff Graduates!!

So it finally happened, and we couldn't be more pleased. Well, I should say I couldn't be more please. Jeff is still positive it's not real, that he's just on Christmas break and he's going to have to go back in January. Poor guy has school PTSD. To help him get over it we went and picked out his new TV last week. For those of you that don't know, I got his family and my family to combine the funds for his graduation present and Christmas present so he could get the big screen he has been wanting forever. It worked out perfectly since about 3 weeks before he graduated ours broke. Anyway, he went and picked one out last.... hmmm.... friday? For those of you that care this is what he got:

http://www.samsclub.com/sams/shop/product.jsp?productId=prod5400031&navAction=push

It's a considerable upgrade in size and picture quality from our old one (oh yeah, and it actually turns on when you press the button) so we are both ridiculously pleased with it. Thanks so much to those of you that contributed! We love you all!

Oh Holy December!

So.... it's possible that the last blog post was in May. Hmmm... sorry about that! I promise I'll try harder, be better, all those things. Anyway.. so it's the Christmas season. One of my daily goals is to create the Christmas spirit a little every day with my boys. Every morning this month we have my homemade advent calendar.

This hangs in the doorway between the living room and dining room and every day Alex gets a bag w/ a small prize inside, ending Christmas Eve. He loves it and I was hoping it would help him begin to comprehend lengths of time. It actually seems to be helping, when he asks if it's Christmas yet we look to see how many bags are left.
  Every year my family rotates names for the brother/sister's family that we buy presents for that year. This year Nellie has us, and she decided to do the 12 days of Christmas. So also every morning Alex gets to open that days gift from Nellie. Today it was a small cast iron cookie kit. I'm pretty stoked about that one, I've been wanting one!
  Today's Spirit of Christmas activity was decorating an Gingerbread Train. Yup, if you've met Alex you know how awesome the existence of a Gingerbread Train is.

Luke's contribution you ask? Making sure we finished off all the frosting of course.

And the finished product:

By the way Grandma Koch, we received your box today, Thanks! Merry Christmas!